Forum:Unnamed Heads of State/Govt Page
We have a few heads of state/govt in HT works that are known simply by their title, e.g., the Duce of Italy in ItPoME, but do "something" worth noting in the course of the story. Because this is often a trick HT uses in works set in the future, and Supervolcano is on the horizon, perhaps we should create a single page to list every head of state and/or government HT acknowledges, does something moderately notable with, but not enough to generate more than a few sentences in an article. TR 19:56, April 20, 2011 (UTC) :Okay. I think it's going to end up looking awfully clunky, though. We've got at least one article that I can think of where we just give such people their own articles, and the world hasn't stopped spinning. But I'm game to try it your way. ::Yes, but in the King of West Algarve's case, he has a bio and history that justify an article. In the case of the Duce of Italy (and the Caudillo of Spain, the Peron of Argentina, the King of Bulgaria, etc.) we know they exist, but they don't do anything more than say "It's sad that Haldweim died." :::Ah, good riddance to bad rabble, says I. I'm still pissed that HT took the coward's way out (and denied us a historical figure) by switching around the letters. Turtle Fan 17:20, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :Let's try to get a master list down. We've got the King of West Algarve, the Duce of Italy in ItPoME, the President of Peru in "Vilcabamba," the Emperor who ordered Atvar to conquer Tosev 3, and I guess the reigning Fuhrer in "Shtetl Days." Also, if we want to count him, the Democratic Speaker of the House who assigned Flora to the Transportation Committee in Breakthroughs. ::Let's leave the King of West Algarve out for the reasons I suggested. Let's also leave out the Speaker, concentrate on heads of state and gove Duce, Caudillo, Peron, King of Bulgaria, Premier of France, Poglavnik of Croatia, Emperor of Japan and Manchukuo are all commented on in ItPoME. In Curious Notions, we have the Kaiser, the Emperors of Austria, Brazil, and the Ottomans, the Kings of England, Portugal, and I think Spain. In The Gladiator, we have the General Secretary of the Italian People's Republic. Any articles about any of those characters would no more detailed than "In the year___, the ____ of _____ took a blimp ride." TR 15:14, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :::The President of Peru in Vilc (Moffat had spoken to him over the phone once or twice, which was about as much contact as the Krolp permitted among the leaders of independent human governments") and the Emperor who ordered Atvar to go to Tosev 3 (Atvar tells Sam that Risson XLVII, the incumbent in HB, is a bit more hands-on than that dude was. Also, his birthday was an imperial holiday, which I would think is true of all the emperors--meaning that the holiday moves around each time a new emperor ascends.) ::::And speaking of Imperial ascendancy, I wonder how the Emperor chooses which son to succeed him. I also wonder why a society which never, ever ever cared about geneology decided hereditary monarchy was worth a try, but that's neither here nor there. Turtle Fan 17:20, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :::As for the Speaker, I'm a bit disappointed HT didn't drop his name. For the most part, he was actually really good about giving us a list of Speakers in TL-191. Turtle Fan 17:20, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :And we do have some articles on historical figures who are referred to only by title, such as the Emperor of Manchukuo in TWTPE. Turtle Fan 01:13, April 21, 2011 (UTC) ::So they don't need to come into it. There is no way that Sanjurjo's survival is going to cause Japan to ditch Puyi early. TR 15:14, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :::Puyi, who grew up thinking he'd be a real emperor, grew pretty disillusioned with the Japanese arrangement pretty quickly. Suppose that in 1936 he was planning to fly to Beijing to try to make a separate peace with Chiang, but then he heard that Sanjurjo had been killed in a plane accident, became scared to fly, and aborted his plans before anyone else knew about them? Then in this timeline, he does try to make the flight, the Japs learn about it. . . . Turtle Fan 17:20, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :Also, the GWI Mexican emperor whom we've tentatively dubbed Francisco Jose I, though we've already got him covered. ::Yeah, I think he's good to go. TR 15:14, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :::Agreed, but you said you wanted a master list, so I thought it might be in order. Turtle Fan 17:20, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :And there was reference in LA to Victoria's Prime Minister, who went unnamed. Though given how the Atlantis series worked, one gets you fifty it was the Earl of Derby. (Of course, Victoria's reign saw the same few PMs recycled ad nauseum, so we can't even accuse HT of parallelism. Well, we can, but not as vigorously as we usually do.) ::Frankly, I'd be ok with Earl of Derby being the PM. Give us one more historical figure. Or he can go on this proposed list. TR 15:14, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :::Ooh, yes, let's! Always room for one more of those. :::Derby's second son was a G-G of Canada so we would almost have another one of those. Said son was also the namesake of the Stanley Cup. You learn something new every day. Turtle Fan 17:20, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :Oh, and the Democrat who defeated Lincoln in 1864 in TL-191. We've come to accept Silver's word that it was Seymour, but technically he remains canonically unnamed. Turtle Fan 01:23, April 21, 2011 (UTC) ::That works. I've been wanting to junk the Southern Victory portions of Seymour. Then again, we do have the POTUS page. TR 15:14, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :::It would survive. :::We also know an unnamed Democrat succeeded Blaine in 1884. I'm thinking that one was a real Democrat, not a Republican-by-another-name like Mahan or Reed or pretty much every named Democratic politician in the twentieth century of TL-191 except for Joe Kennedy. When you merge parties like that, the dominant party retains pride of place for a little while, at least. Turtle Fan 17:20, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :Also a pope. McSweeney is airing his religious bigotry at Mantarakis and Mantarakis says "You know, we Greek Orthodox don't like to Pope too much ourselves." One assumes that means the current pope as of that statement. (Well, one assumes it means the institution of the papacy, but the incumbent does draw that fire quite effectively in almost any age.) We used to be comfortable enough that Benedict XV was Pope, but we took that down a while ago. ::No we didn't. He's still here. :::He is? Oh. The autofill wasn't kicking in when I tried to link to him so I assumed he was gone and changed the content of that sentence. Turtle Fan 17:20, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :Assuming that the incumbent Pope as of the POD died on schedule, and further assuming that the only Pope for whom we have a name in TL-191, Pius XII, is the OTL Pius XII, there's a 61-year gap before his election. Of course, I'm sure that HT would at need have filled that gap by simply shifting entries over from the historical list; but in canon, we have no name, only the fact that the Chair of St Peter was occupied during the Great War. I guess we'd call him "the Pope (TL-191, Great War era)." Rolls right off the tongue. Turtle Fan 05:31, April 21, 2011 (UTC) ::We can keep him Benedict, or move him over to the proposed list. :::I hate to delete someone who's not bothering us any--especially after we had to reverse our deletion of Charles V almost immediately--but it might be better to shift him. Even if HT made almost no changes to the pre-WWI histories of countries outside of North America, we should probably maintain a certain skepticism in these areas. For the sake of the speculation policy if nothing else. Turtle Fan 17:20, April 21, 2011 (UTC) ::::In which case, we really can't have Derby, since the argument for adding him is the same as keeping Benedict. TR 18:28, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :::::One could argue that the Atlantean timeline has had even more negligible an effect on European history than pre-GWI TL-191 did, but it would be a desperate face-saving measure. :::::I'm not sure it's worth giving Derby an article, though, even if we are willing to call him the PM. The most it would say is "After being accosted by an angry constituent, Atlantean Consul Leland Newton reflected on the unique nature of Atlantean democracy. By contrast, a British subject would never dream of speaking to Queen Victoria in such a way, and neither would he address her Prime Minister. Literary Note While Turtledove does not name the Prime Minister of the UK at the time of the Servile Insurrection, given the fact that Atlantean history appears to have had a negligible effect on European history, the mods of this Wiki feel that we are justified in assuming that the Earl of Derby served as Prime Minister in this timeline's 1852, as he did in OTL." Turtle Fan 18:58, April 21, 2011 (UTC) ::Incidentally, I think the list would be better organized by story, with the various somewhat important characters listed below. TR 15:14, April 21, 2011 (UTC) :::Sounds fine to me. Turtle Fan 17:20, April 21, 2011 (UTC)